"This dissertation is an ethnographic study of the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC) and its engagement with the health of its surrounding communities. UCMC's location on the South Side of Chicago, with a large population of un- and underinsured patients, resulted in a financial burden that UCMC leadership feared would undermine its mission as an elite academic medical center–that is, to conduct biomedical research, to provide professional education, and to offer a range of clinical services much of which includes technologically-advanced specialty care.

I focus on a series of projects undertaken by UCMC to address this perceived conflict grouped under the heading of an "Urban Health Initiative" (UHI). Developed in 2006, the UHI sought to stem the tide of poor patients at UCMC by forging new alliances and service agreements for the provision of health care on the South Side. The UHI was cast not just as a framework for intervention, but also for research into the determinants of urban health more generally."

Jennifer Karlin, a former Social Sciences PhD student, authored this dissertation in 2012.